Same drill, new distros. Just like six months ago, I want to tell
you all about the boot times of the latest Ubuntu family, named Quantal Quetzal. While you may argue that this
is a trivial segment of the overall computing business, you cannot deny the fact companies are placing quite a
bit of emphasis on it, plus a lot of people seem to like reading about this kind of stuff. Well, it's easily
measured and can create a lot of buzz. So let us buzz.

I will pit these three against one another - Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Xubuntu, all Quetzals, and then we will also
compare them to the spring releases, so see what gives. My test setup is the T61 machine with two cores, 2GB of
RAM and two 40GB SSD. Without further ado, follow me for a quick competition.

Ubuntu 12.10 results

Pangolin managed to boot to desktop in 12 seconds, a degradation of three
seconds compared to Ocelot. This time around, the fairly sucky Quetzal booted
in about 21 seconds, which is almost double the spring value. Not a good indication of how things are supposed
to be, but not surprising given the overall low quality of the autumn release. Please ignore the ugly theme,
it's all part of my testing.

Kubuntu 12.10 results

With bootchart in place, Kubuntu
Quantal clocked 16.4 seconds, which is about 1.5 seconds less than its predecessor. Again, this does not
surprise us, because the autumn release is that much better than the spring one. Oh, do note the linked review is for a test performed on a different machine,
one with Nvidia graphics card. However, in this session, I specifically installed and test the distro on the
dedicated laptop with SSD, like the rest.

Xubuntu 12.10 results

The Xfce-flavored Ubuntu version is the most surprising candidate of all.
Not only has it shown steady improvement in the past year to the point of becoming truly amazing, it also
maintained its sharp, fast edge. Xubuntu Quetzal took only 8 seconds to boot. So if you're so happily
blathering about Windows 8 super-fast boot on latest
hardware, don't. This four-year-old machine and its Xfce distro beat that easily. Last time, Xubuntu managed to complete its boot sequence in 8.5 seconds, and now it's
even sprightlier than before, blimey.

Conclusion

Another session, another slew of surprises. The variation and inconsistency are intriguing. Ubuntu manages to
be the worst with 21 seconds under its belt, while Xubuntu is lightning quick with only 8 seconds. This is an
even wider gap than in May. What more, the two non-stock distros are showing improvement, ever so slight, while
the parent release has experienced an almost 80% degradation, on top of the 50% loss it already had.

If boot times are any indicator, and they seem to be, Xubuntu is the distro you want for your machine, be it
slow or fast. Indeed, I am almost willing to commit this operating system to my production setup, that good it
is now. Kubuntu is also tad better, and it's always nice to see fresh things and improvement. Ubuntu
disappoints in yet another category, on top of everything else. Lots of bugs, privacy issues, abysmal Nvidia setup, and now this. Well, that's how it is. You make your own
conclusions. Me, I'm gonna keep writing fancy articles for you. There you go. Unneeded, but fun.